Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32 percent were a regular source of care for their children under age 15, up from 26 percent in 2002, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. Among these fathers with preschool-age children, one in five fathers was the primary caregiver, meaning their child spent more time in their care than any other type of arrangement.

Not only are working mothers multitasking more frequently than working fathers, but their multitasking experience is more negative as well, according to a study in the December 2011 issue of the American Sociological Review. The study found that working mothers spend about 10 more hours per week multitasking than do working fathers, 48.3 hours per week for moms compared to 38.9 for dads. But the authors said an even bigger issue than the time discrepancy is the difference in the way multitasking makes working mothers and fathers feel.

Newswise — WASHINGTON, DC, November 28, 2011 — Not only are working mothers multitasking more frequently than working fathers, but their multitasking experience is more negative as well, according to a new study in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.

“Gender differences in multitasking are not only a matter of quantity but, more importantly, quality,” said Shira Offer, the lead author of the study and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. “Our findings provide support for the popular notion that women are the ultimate multitaskers and suggest that the emotional experience of multitasking is very different for mothers and fathers.”

In terms of quantity, the study found that working mothers spend about 10 more hours per week multitasking than do working fathers, 48.3 hours per week for moms compared to 38.9 for dads.

“This suggests that working mothers are doing two activities at once more than two-fifths of the time they are awake, while working fathers are multitasking more than a third of their waking hours,” said study coauthor Barbara Schneider, the John A. Hannah Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education and Department of Sociology at Michigan State University.

But the authors said an even bigger issue than the time discrepancy is the difference in the way multitasking makes working mothers and fathers feel. “There is a considerable disparity in the quality of the multitasking experience for working moms and dads,” Offer said. “For mothers, multitasking is—on the whole—a negative experience, whereas it is not for fathers. Only mothers report negative emotions and feeling stressed and conflicted when they multitask at home and in public settings. By contrast, multitasking in these contexts is a positive experience for fathers.”

The Offer-Schneider study relies on data from the 500 Family Study, a multi-method investigation of how middle-class families balance family and work experiences. The 500 Family Study collected comprehensive information from 1999 to 2000 on families living in eight urban and suburban communities across the United States. Most parents in the 500 Family Study are highly educated, employed in professional occupations, and work, on average, longer hours and report higher earnings than do middle-class families in other nationally representative samples. Although the 500 Family Study is not a representative sample of families in the United States, it reflects one of the most time pressured segments of the population. The Offer-Schneider study uses a subsample of 368 mothers and 241 fathers in dual-earner families from the 500 Family Study.

According to Offer and Schneider, their study shows that at least some of the difference in the way multitasking makes working mothers and fathers feel is related to the types of activities they perform.

“When they multitask at home, for example, mothers are more likely than fathers to engage in housework or childcare activities, which are usually labor intensive efforts,” Offer said. “Fathers, by contrast, tend to engage in other types of activities when they multitask at home, such as talking to a third person or engaging in self-care. These are less burdensome experiences.”

The study found that among working mothers, 52.7 percent of all multitasking episodes at home involve housework, compared to 42.2 percent among working fathers. Additionally, 35.5 percent of all multitasking episodes at home involve childcare for mothers versus 27.9 for fathers.

The authors also believe that multitasking—particularly at home and in public—is a more negative experience for working mothers than for fathers because mothers’ activities are more susceptible to outside scrutiny.

“At home and in public are the environments in which most household- and childcare-related tasks take place, and mothers’ activities in these settings are highly visible to other people,” Schneider said. “Therefore, their ability to fulfill their role as good mothers can be easily judged and criticized when they multitask in these contexts, making it a more stressful and negative experience for them than for fathers.”

Working fathers don’t typically face these types of pressures, the authors said. “Although they are also expected to be involved in their children’s lives and do household chores, fathers are still considered to be the family’s major provider,” Offer said. “As a result, fathers face less normative pressures and are under less scrutiny when they perform and multitask at home and in public.”

So, what can be done to improve the situation for mothers? It’s pretty simple—fathers need to step up.

“The key to mothers’ emotional well-being is to be found in the behavior of fathers,” Offer said. “I think that in order to reduce mothers’ likelihood of multitasking and to make their experience of multitasking less negative, fathers’ share of housework and childcare has to further increase.”

Policymakers and employers can help facilitate this, the authors said. “Policymakers and employers should think about how to alter current workplace cultures, which constitute serious obstacles when it comes to getting fathers more involved in their families and homes,” Offer said.

“For example, I think that fathers should have more opportunities to leave work early or start work late, so they can participate in important family routines; to take time off for family events; and to limit the amount of work they bring home, so they can pay undivided attention to their children and spouse during the evening hours and on weekends. The goal is to initiate a process that will alter fathers’ personal preferences and priorities and eventually lead to more egalitarian norms regarding mothers’ and fathers’ parenting roles.”

About the American Sociological Association and the American Sociological ReviewThe American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The American Sociological Review is the ASA’s flagship journal.

The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA’s Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.

This study suggests that multitasking constitutes an important source of gender inequality, which can help explain previous findings that mothers feel more burdened and stressed than do fathers even when they have relatively similar workloads. Using data from the 500 Family Study, including surveys and the Experience Sampling Method, the study examines activities parents simultaneously engage in and how they feel when multitasking. We find that mothers spend 10 more hours a week multitasking compared to fathers and that these additional hours are mainly related to time spent on housework and childcare. For mothers, multitasking activities at home and in public are associated with an increase in negative emotions, stress, psychological distress, and work-family conflict. By contrast, fathers’ multitasking at home involves less housework and childcare and is not a negative experience. We also find several similarities by gender. Mothers’ and fathers’ multitasking in the company of a spouse or children are positive experiences, whereas multitasking at work, although associated with an increased sense of productivity, is perceived as a negative experience.

U.S. births dropped for the third straight year — especially for young mothers — and experts think money worries are the reason.

A federal report released Thursday showed declines in the birth rate for all races and most age groups. Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since record-keeping began in the 1940s. Also, the rate of cesarean sections stopped going up for the first time since 1996.

U.S. births dropped for the third straight year — especially for young mothers — and experts think money worries are the reason.

A federal report released Thursday showed declines in the birth rate for all races and most age groups. Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since record-keeping began in the 1940s. Also, the rate of cesarean sections stopped going up for the first time since 1996.

Experts suspected the economy drove down birth rates in 2008 and 2009 as women put off having children. With the 2010 figures, suspicion has turned into certainty.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt now that it was the recession. It could not be anything else,” said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. He was not involved in the new report.

...

CDC report:http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Ever wonder what’s on the other side of the cubicle? While many of us toil away at our computers, some American workers have jobs that involve travel, adventure and even danger. These jobs, intoxicating for the people who hold them, are becoming more prevalent with globalization and preservation. Yet, even the hardiest of adventurers find it challenging to balance their professions and home lives.

Barely recovering from giving birth to twin girls, explorer Mireya Mayor already is planning her next adventure into the jungle. She may go to Africa to observe wild chimpanzees or to Madagascar to try to discover a new species of lemurs.

Clearly, studying animals on the verge of extinction as a National Geographic explorer has become more challenging since becoming a mother. With four girls under the age of six, Mayor feels a bit differently about making expeditions for two or three months in remote habitats — with little or no communications ability. But she has no plans to give it up.

“When I had children, I thought I had to make a decision to stay home or be an explorer,” Mayor says. “I realized that being an explorer is not what I do, it’s who I am.”

Ever wonder what’s on the other side of the cubicle? While many of us toil away at our computers, some American workers have jobs that involve travel, adventure and even danger. These jobs, intoxicating for the people who hold them, are becoming more prevalent with globalization and preservation. Yet, even the hardiest of adventurers find it challenging to balance their professions and home lives.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, has studied extreme jobs — those that require people to work 70-hour weeks and those that require long periods of travel. “These extreme jobs are tougher on women because they are less likely to have a stay-at-home spouse,” Hewlett says. “Men tend to have more of a support system at home.”

The National Women's Law Center's 8th annual review of key child care subsidy policies in all fifty states and the District of Columbia reveals that families were worse off in 37 states than they were in 2010 under one or more child care assistance policies. Families are not only worse off in 2011 than they were in 2010, but are also worse off than a decade ago. Families in only eleven states were better off under one or more child care policy areas than last year, a sharp contrast to NWLC’s findings in the previous year when families in thirty-four states were better off in 2010 than they were in 2009 and worse off in only fifteen states.

Female-oriented advertising consultanting group Women at NBCU put out a press release documenting a survey it did of women regarding family life, a press release that was all but faithfully reprinted at the Salt Lake Tribune. It's a delicious example of how to generate a whole bunch of words out of meaningless nonsense. Women at NBCU claims to have discovered that American women and men are getting more home-y, domestic, and traditional, but the questions the group asked to get this information should provoke skepticism instead of belief.

For instance, the survey found that 66 percent of mothers would rather be a stay-at-home mother than a working parent, which is touted as strong evidence of some genuine enthusiasm for '50s-era living. But the same survey found that 36 percent of men also said they wanted to stay at home, which is the antithesis of tradition. It appears what this survey is measuring isn't some widespread desire to find fulfillment through homemaking so much as a widespread desire to not have to work for a living. Since the question was asked of men and women who had already indicated financial necessity as a reason to work, these results aren't unexpected, since people are assuming you're asking if they'd like to be wealthy enough that work is optional. If you'd asked people, "Would you like a rich relative to die so that you could never work a day again?" you'd probably see a lot of enthusiasm for that fantasy, as well. I'm a rowdy feminist, but if you suggested that I could spend my life baking cookies without nary a worry of money again, I'd probably indulge that fantasy for a minute, too. I'd bet a question that brought more of the realities of housewifery into view---stay-at-home mothers are more than twice as likely to live in poverty---would produce many times less enthusiasm. That would be especially true if women were reminded that a single-breadwinner home means having to ask your spouse for any and all money that you spend.

I also have to quarrel with this: "Moms reported that the 'breakdown of the traditional family' was the second most serious issue facing children today, right after drug abuse." Interesting. I wonder what the options they were provided were, since in reality the most pressing problem probably facing children today is poverty---nearly one in five children live in poverty. But the wording of "breakdown of the traditional family" is so vague as to be meaningless. I'm sure married women answering this question are quick to latch onto that, because divorce is a very real and scary threat and that answer echoes their direct fears. If you were to ask me what the most serious problems facing cohabitating women in their 30s are these days, I'd probably be distracted by you tossing in "your boyfriend turns out to be a cheating louse and you had no idea" with a list of other things like "employment opportunities" and "health insurance concerns." Had they been more specific about what a "traditional family" is, however, I bet they'd get different results. If women were asked whether or not they think that it's good for children to be raised in a society with legal marital rape, a blind eye toward domestic violence, and an inability of women to sue for divorce if their husbands walk out on them---all markers of the "traditional" family---I'm guessing you'd get a different answer. Same story if you asked women if they'd be better off if they weren't allowed to have their own bank accounts or to borrow money on their own, since allowing women to control their own money is part of the breakdown of the "traditional" family. The problem with using the word "traditional" on a survey is that it's a feel-good word that encourages people to look at the past with rose-colored glasses. It invokes Christmas trees and cardigans, dinner at Grandma's, and church weddings. It doesn't invoke unhappy marriages from which there is no escape, though of course that's a far more relevant aspect of "traditional" marriages than the color of your wedding gown.

Of course, one alternate reading for this survey is they simply found the most delusional group of women alive: "60 percent of moms believe that in 10 to 20 years there will be as many stay-at-home dads as there are stay-at-home moms." Unless we have some drastic, rioting-in-the-streets level of social change, this belief simply cannot come into fruition. There are 5 million stay-at-home mothers in the United States, according to the Census Bureau. There are, according to the same survey, 154,000 stay-at-home fathers. In other words, there are 32 times as many stay-at-home mothers in the U.S. than stay-at-home fathers. The level of social change required to even those numbers out would be revolutionary, and there's no real indication that this level of change is on the horizon.

Today's moms are aspiring to be modern day June Cleavers, according to a just released Women at NBCU study. At the most unconventional time in motherhood, where only 4% of today's families fall into the US Census definition of "traditional,"[1] a remarkable 49% of moms say "Traditional" is the number one parenting style they aspire to be. Reflecting this bent towards values of a different era, an astounding 77% of the moms surveyed prefer to have children with good manners over good grades.

And while moms continue to make inroads in the workforce, interestingly, their aspirations are changing as well. In another sign that they are embracing a more traditional lifestyle, 66% of moms say they would rather be a stay-at-home parent than a working parent. Additionally, the majority of employed moms (53%) feel that while financially they need to work, they would prefer to be stay-at-home moms. The rift between reality and aspiration has never been wider, supported by the startling fact that only 12% of moms in the study say they believe they are very accurately portrayed in advertising.

"Although moms are not saying they want to go back to the 1950s, they are clinging to certain values and traditions associated with that time period," said Melissa Lavigne-Delville, VP of Trends and Strategic Insights, Integrated Media at NBCUniversal. "There's a backlash to the complexity of current conditions like the economy and fragmented families. Brands with strong "roots" have an opportunity to play up their heritage or consider resurrecting brand assets from this past. Ultimately, though, women will need products and services that are modern and can keep pace with their everyday realities – traditional cannot mean 'old school.'"

According to the study, dads' aspirations are shifting dramatically, too. More than 1/3 of dads (36%) would prefer to be a stay-at-home parent than a working parent. Additionally, while dads claim they are pitching in at home more than fathers of previous generations, perceptions about the actual amount of housework diverges between partners: 61% of dads say they split the household labor and childcare equally with their partner, while only 27% of moms feel the home workload is evenly split.

The survey also shed light on the fact that, ironically, the most technically-connected generation of moms, Gen Y's (18-32 years old), are the ones who actually feel most out of touch. Nearly twice as many Gen Y's (42%) as Gen X's (24%) felt isolated when they first became mothers. This is, in part, attributed to the fact that women are becoming mothers at all different ages and, thus, cannot necessarily relate to their peers. Unlike previous eras, first-time motherhood can span four decades.

Other noteworthy findings from Women at NBCU's new family study include:

60% of moms believe that in 10-20 years there will be as many stay-at-home dads as there are stay-at-home moms.

Moms reported that the "breakdown of the traditional family" was the second most serious issue facing children today, right after drug abuse.

31% of moms reveal that they tend to linger longer in the shower, while running errands, on appointments or during a commute, just to find a little more alone time during the day.

30% of moms believe that in order to keep up with today's competitiveness, a child's education begins at or even before birth.

Moms chose Reese Witherspoon as the celebrity mom they most identified with.

Methodology:

Nationally representative survey among 3,224 moms and 403 dads fielded in June and August of 2011. In addition we conducted 8 in-home ethnographies with moms, 8 in-home focus groups with moms and 1 focus group with dads.

About Women At NBCU:

Launched in May 2008, Women at NBCU is a powerful combination of media assets reaching women across multiple platforms. This ad sales, marketing and research initiative creates custom solutions for advertisers to connect with female consumers via NBCUniversal's wide portfolio, including Oxygen, Style, iVillage, Telemundo, Sprout, DailyCandy, Bravo, "TODAY," as well as other female-skewing primetime shows on NBC. With its television, digital, and new media platforms, NBCUniversal reaches 95% of U.S. women per month and is home to six of the top ten cable networks with the highest concentration of mom viewers 18-49.

The White House and the National Science Foundation announced a new 10-year plan, the "NSF Career-Life Balance Initiative," that will allow researchers who receive NSF grants to delay their awards for up to one year to care for a newborn or a newly adopted child, and will allow principal investigators to apply for stipends to pay their research technicians and similar staff members to maintain labs while the researcher is on family leave.

Editorial:

By Sara Hebel

Washington

The White House and the National Science Foundation announced new policies on Monday that are designed to provide greater workplace flexibility for postdoctoral fellows and early-career faculty members who are juggling careers and families and to eliminate some of the barriers that commonly deter women who might otherwise pursue careers as scientists and engineers.

The 10-year plan, the "NSF Career-Life Balance Initiative," will allow researchers who receive NSF grants to delay their awards for up to one year to care for a newborn or a newly adopted child, and will allow principal investigators to apply for stipends to pay their research technicians and similar staff members to maintain labs while the researcher is on family leave.

For researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields who review the grant proposals of their peers, the NSF will expand opportunities for virtual reviews to limit the need for travel and the need to arrange care for dependents when the reviewer is away. The NSF also will encourage universities to put in place their own policies to provide more flexibilities, such as by extending the tenure clock for faculty with family obligations.

"Too many young women scientists and engineers get sidetracked or drop their promising careers because they find it too difficult to balance the needs of those careers and the needs of their families," said Subra Suresh, director of the NSF. "This new initiative aims to change that, so that the country can benefit from the full range and diversity of its talent."

Women earn 41 percent of Ph.D.'s in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, according to the White House, but they make up only 28 percent of tenure-trackfacultyin those fields.

Not only does the phenomena called baby fever exist, it is found in both men and women, according to researchers from Kansas State University. Gary Brase, associate professor of psychology, and his wife, Sandra Brase, a project coordinator with the university's College of Education, have spent nearly 10 years researching baby fever: the physical and emotional desire to have a baby.

Not only does the phenomena called baby fever exist, it is found in both men and women, according to researchers from Kansas State University. Gary Brase, associate professor of psychology, and his wife, Sandra Brase, a project coordinator with the university's College of Education, have spent nearly 10 years researching baby fever: the physical and emotional desire to have a baby.

"Baby fever is this idea out in popular media that at some point in their lives, people get this sudden change in their desire to have children," Gary Brase said. "While it is often portrayed in women, we noticed it in men, too."

...

While some research has looked at the demographic and sociological aspects of having children, there had been no previous study from a psychological perspective, Sandra Brase said. The Kansas State University research appears in the upcoming issue of Emotion, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

The researchers started by applying three different theoretical viewpoints about why baby fever might exist and where it came from:

The sociocultural view: People want to have a baby because they are taught gender roles. Women think they should have children because society says that is what they are supposed to do.

The byproduct view: Humans experience nurturance. When they see a cute baby they want to take care of it, and that makes them want to have a baby of their own. Baby fever is a by-product -- it is nurturance misplaced.

The adaptationist view: Baby fever is an emotional signal -- like a suggestion sent from one part of the mind to the other parts -- that this this could be a good time to have a child.

The researchers then performed studies to understand people's desires, particularly the desire to have a baby.

"Sometimes you may have a desire to have a baby, sometimes you have desires to have money or be famous or have sex," said Gary Brase, whose research focuses on judgment and decision-making. "We asked people to tell us where these desires ranked."

The researchers found several interesting results: First, that baby fever did exist and it existed in both genders. But how frequently a desire for a baby occurred varied according to gender. Women more frequently desired having a child than having sex. Men were the opposite and more frequently desired sex than having a child.

"We found this kind of ironic because sex and having a baby are causally related," Gary Brase said.

The researchers also asked people to describe what led them to want and not want to have a baby. Based on these responses, the researchers created a questionnaire that asked participants their attitudes toward children and fertility. They surveyed college students and also used an online survey to reach a wider range of participants.

"The idea that gender role or misplaced nurturance are the major driving forces didn't get a lot of support from our study," Gary Brase said. "It is something much more fundamental than that."

Rather, the researchers found three factors that consistently predicted how much a person wanted to have a baby. The first factor was positive exposure -- such as holding and cuddling babies, looking after babies and looking at baby clothes and toys -- that made people want to have a baby. The second factor included negative exposure -- such as babies crying, children having tantrums and diapers, spit-up or other 'disgusting' aspects of babies -- that made people not want to have a baby. The third factor included trade-offs that come with having children -- education, career, money and social life.

"We had people who were high on the positive aspects and they see all the good things about babies and want a baby," Gary Brase said. "We also had people who were high on the negative aspects and absolutely do not want to have babies. Then we had people who were high on both positive and negative aspects and were very conflicted about children.

"Having children is kind of the reason we exist -- to reproduce and pass our genes on to the next generation," he said. "But economically, having children is expensive and you don't get any decent financial return on this investment. And yet, here we are, actual people kind of stuck in the middle."

The researchers plan follow-up studies that focus on the role of hormones and why people might experience high and low

Baby fever—a visceral physical and emotional desire to have a baby—is well known in popular culture, but has not been empirically studied in psychology. Different theoretical perspectives suggest that desire for a baby is either superfluous to biological sex drives and maternal instincts, a sociocultural phenomenon unrelated to biological or evolutionary forces, or an evolved adpatation for regulating birth timing, proceptive behavior, and life history trajectories. A series of studies (involving 337 undergraduate participants and 853 participants from a general population Internet sample) found that: (a) a simple scale measure could elicit ratings of desire frequency; (b) these ratings exhibited significant sex differences; (c) this sex difference was distinct from a general desire for sexual activity; and (d) these findings generalize to a more diverse online population. Factor analyses of ratings for desire elicitors/inhibitors identified three primary factors underlying baby fever. Baby fever appears to be a real phenomenon, with an underlying multifactorial structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)

A report put out by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, groups whose missions include strengthening marriage and family life, says that research shows the children of cohabiting parents are at risk for a broad range of problems, from trouble in school to psychological stress, physical abuse and poverty. It suggests a shift in focus is needed away from the children of divorce, which has long been a preoccupying concern for such scholars.

Editorial:

From the article:

As more and more U.S. couples decide to have children without first getting married, a group of 18 family scholars is sounding an alarm about the impact this may have on those children.

In a new report out on Tuesday, they say research shows the children of cohabiting parents are at risk for a broad range of problems, from trouble in school to psychological stress, physical abuse and poverty.

The study is put out by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, groups whose missions include strengthening marriage and family life. It suggests a shift in focus is needed away from the children of divorce, which has long been a preoccupying concern for such scholars.

Brad Wilcox, a report co-author and head of the National Marriage Project, says divorce rates have steadily dropped since their peak in 1979-80, while rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing have soared. Forty-one percent of all births are now to unwed mothers, many of them living with — but not married to — the child's father.

February 6, 2009 posted by admin Dear Barack and Michelle, I’m writing to you as the parents of beautiful girls, and as people who hold the future of this country in your hands for the next four years. I know that you both take seriously your job as parents as well as the way you can shape public policy to improve your daughters’ lives. Michelle has talked about supporting working parents and Barack has talked about fighting workplace discrimination so Sasha and Malia will not have to experience it as adults. George W.